We use tools from free probability to study the spectra of Hermitian operators on infinite graphs. Special attention is devoted to universal covering trees of finite graphs. For operators on these graphs, we derive a new variational formula for the spectral radius and provide new proofs of results due to Sunada and Aomoto using free probability.

With the goal of extending the applicability of free probability techniques beyond universal covering trees, we introduce a new combinatorial product operation on graphs and show that, in the noncommutative probability context, it corresponds to the notion of freeness with amalgamation. We show that Cayley graphs of amalgamated free products of groups, as well as universal covering trees, can be constructed using our graph product.

We investigate the concept of orbital free entropy from the viewpoint of the matrix liberation process. We will show that many basic questions around the definition of orbital free entropy are reduced to the question of full large deviation principle for the matrix liberation process. We will also obtain a large deviation upper bound for a certain family of random matrices that is essential to define the orbital free entropy. The resulting rate function is made up into a new approach to free mutual information.

We show that the partial transposes of complex Wishart random matrices are asymptotically free. We also investigate regimes where the number of blocks is fixed but the size of the blocks increases. This gives an example where the partial transpose produces freeness at the operator level. Finally, we investigate the case of real Wishart matrices.

We study a canonical ${{\text{C}}^{*}}$-algebra, $\text{S}\left( \Gamma ,\mu \right)$, that arises from a weighted graph $\left( \Gamma ,\mu \right)$, specific cases of which were previously studied in the context of planar algebras. We discuss necessary and sufficient conditions of the weighting that ensure simplicity and uniqueness of trace of $\text{S}\left( \Gamma ,\mu \right)$, and study the structure of its positive cone. We then study the $*$-algebra, $\mathcal{A}$, generated by the generators of $\text{S}\left( \Gamma ,\mu \right)$, and use a free differential calculus and techniques of Charlesworth and Shlyakhtenko as well as Mai, Speicher, and Weber to show that certain “loop” elements have no atoms in their spectral measure. After modifying techniques of Shlyakhtenko and Skoufranis to show that self adjoint elements$x\,\in \,{{M}_{n}}\left( \mathcal{A} \right)$ have algebraic Cauchy transform, we explore some applications to eigenvalues of polynomials in Wishart matrices and to diagrammatic elements in von Neumann algebras initially considered by Guionnet, Jones, and Shlyakhtenko.

We demonstrate that the notions of bi-free independence and combinatorial-bi-free independence of two-faced families are equivalent using a diagrammatic view of bi-non-crossing partitions. These diagrams produce an operator model on a Fock space suitable for representing any two-faced family of non-commutative random variables. Furthermore, using a Kreweras complement on bi-non-crossing partitions we establish the expected formulas for the multiplicative convolution of a bi-free pair of two-faced families.

It is known that the normalized standard generators of the free orthogonal quantum group $O_{N}^{+}$ converge in distribution to a free semicircular system as $N\,\to \,\infty$. In this note, we substantially improve this convergence result by proving that, in addition to distributional convergence, the operator normof any non-commutative polynomial in the normalized standard generators of $O_{N}^{+}$ converges as $N\,\to \,\infty$ to the operator norm of the corresponding non-commutative polynomial in a standard free semicircular system. Analogous strong convergence results are obtained for the generators of free unitary quantum groups. As applications of these results, we obtain a matrix-coefficient version of our strong convergence theorem, and we recover a well-known ${{\mathcal{L}}^{2}}\,-\,{{\mathcal{L}}^{\infty }}$ norm equivalence for noncommutative polynomials in free semicircular systems.